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28 March 2017

In the mid 1980s, after the coming of AIDS, the masculist gay sex bars in New
York, the Anvil, The Mineshaft, the Toilet, went out of business, either
voluntarily or under pressure from the city. The
Anvil had in its early days featured Felipe Rose who dressed as
a Native American (he was Lakota on his father’s side) and was later recruited
for the Village
People disco group. The Anvil also put on drag shows. It closed in November
1985, and Conrad, its manager, moved to Blues, a nightclub at 264 W
43rd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues. Blues
was popular with those working in the sex trade around Times Square. This did
not work out, and late 1986 – the year that Harry
Benjamin died – the nightclub was re-opened as Sally’s Hideaway, managed by
two femme queens: Sally Maggio and Jesse
Torres, the hostess manager.

Sally and Jesse had worked in the early 1970s at the trans/gay 220 Club, at
220 West Houston Street, where Lou
Reed drank and was presumed to have named his album and track, Sally
Can’t Dance, after the manager (although it was photographs of his trans
lover, Rachel, which appeared on the inner sleeve). Sally and
Jesse then worked at the Greenwich Pub, at 8th Avenue and
13th Street, which attracted gay trans and their admirers.

There was a serious fire in 1992. Sally moved the club a few doors away to
252 West 43rd Street, which was attached to the Carter Hotel. It was
now known as Sally’s II, or simply Sally’s. The bar was circular, two flights up
from the street, and there was also a small lounge, up another flight of stairs
at the side of the bar. Behind the bar there was a wall of doors permanently
closed until one day Sally discovered the unused theatre of the Carter Hotel,
only another set of doors away from the hotel lobby. Sally’s II expanded into
this space and used the stage. Drag pageants and drag balls were held, usually
hosted by or in homage to the ballroom legends of the day: Octavia
St. Laurent, Pepper LaBeija, Avis
Pendavis. Paris Dupree’s “Paris is Burning” ball was held here in 1992, and the subsequent
1990 film included opening and ending sequences shot outside Sally’s, and strongly featured Dorian Corey and Angie Xtravaganza.

Grace

There was also the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, lip synch
performer and comedienne, who had started in the Anvil, and when that closed she
emceed and performed at Greenwich Pub for Sally Maggio, and then at Midtown 43
where she did a Sunday Night drag revue. Midtown 43 closed in 1989, by which time
Grace was also working at Sally’s. After the fire and the move she was given a
steady gig emceeing Sunday and sometimes Monday night. At Midtown 43 Grace had
had a following among the butch queens of the ball house crowd, but these did
not feel at home in Sally’s.

Trans musician Terre
Thaemlitz dj’d there in the early 1990s, until fired for refusing to play
the music that was in the charts. The Transy House people, Rusty
Mae Moore, Chelsea Goodwin, Julia Murray, Sylvia Rivera, Kristiana Th’mas,
went as a group and were regarded as a ‘house’ in the Paris is Burning sense.
Self-described tranny-chaser Jonathan
Ames was also found there, and the club is featured in his bildungsroman and
the subsequent film, The Extra Man.

Sally Maggio died in October 1993. Jesse Torres continued the club, although
Mayor Rudolph

Jesse

Giuliani, real estate interests and the Walt Disney Corporation were
changing the character of the Time Square area. Jesse died, unexpectedly, in
September 1996 while attending the Miss Continental Pageant in Chicago. Giselle,
a long-time Sally’s barmaid, took over, but business was waning. After a series
of police busts, Sally’s closed in November 1997.

Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini (dirs) The Extra Man. Scr:
Robert Pulcini & Jonathan Ames, based on the novel by Jonathan Ames, with
Paul Dana as Louis Ives and Gisele Alicea as Miss Pepper. US 108 mins 2010.

Jeremy Reed. Waiting for the Man: The life and Career of Lou Reed.
Overlook Books, 2015: 82.

www.sallys-hideaway.com____________________________________
The one and only account of Sally's is at www.sallys-hideaway,com, The author is identified only by email address as Brian Lantelme, which explains why the Ladylike, 46, 2001 account is virtually the same. However Lantelme does not mention Lou Reed, Jonathan Ames, Terre Thaemlitz or Rusty Rae Moore.

There is no mention at all of Sally's in Julian Fleisher's The Drag Queens of New York, 1996. There is no mention at all of Sally's in Laurence Senelick' The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre, 2000,

I would have liked more information about the Amazing, Electrifying Grace, and her transfer from the Anvil to Midtown 43 to Sally's. Was her act the same, or did it change to reflect the audience?

The Anvil was, in effect, a gentleman's club: women, cis or trans were not usually admitted as customers, although it is said that Lee Radziwill, sister to Jackie Onassis, frequented the place in male drag.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 45 years.